Martine Rose will take over as Balenciaga’s creative director on November 16. Her appointment was announced the day after Pierpaolo Piccioli’s departure, ending a tenure that began in July 2025. For the British designer of Jamaican heritage, this is a return: Demna brought her in as a menswear consultant in 2015, a collaboration that lasted three years. That history offers more insight into Kering’s decision than the official words of welcome.
Over a decade under Demna, Balenciaga had built an instantly recognizable identity. Exaggerated volumes, everyday clothing given a different price and meaning, provocation worked into the product itself. That language had cultivated an audience and changed perceptions of the brand.
Piccioli had been given a role that called for a substantial change. At Valentino, he had developed a vision consistent with the brand’s culture. At Balenciaga, he had begun to focus on construction, lightness of volume and a softer, more romantic femininity. The reference to Cristóbal Balenciaga, the founder whose name the brand bears, was expressed through the clothes: enveloping coats, shapes standing away from the body, fabrics capable of supporting an architectural form.
To describe this simply as a return to classicism would be reductive. Cristóbal had transformed the proportions of women’s clothing; Piccioli was seeking a connection with that experimentation through his own sensibility. It was a proposal that needed time to develop, and just as much time to be absorbed by customers who knew Balenciaga chiefly through Demna. Sixteen months leave little room for either.
Rose returns with experience gained beyond the large luxury group. She founded her own label in London in 2007 and built a following by working with the codes of British subcultures, music and the conventions of menswear. Her distortions of proportion follow a precise logic: a shoulder, a length or the volume of a shoe changes the character of a familiar garment. Her appearance as guest designer at Pitti Uomo in 2023 brought that work to a Florentine audience.
Her appointment suggests a move back toward the culture that had driven the brand’s success under Demna. It is nevertheless difficult to ignore the distance between this decision and the choice of Piccioli little more than a year earlier.
The change is part of the creative reorganization led by Luca de Meo, following departures at Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen. For Balenciaga, the transition carries a particular cost: customers had been asked to follow a new idea of elegance and will now have to find their bearings again. Rose therefore inherits a task that extends beyond designing the collections.
Before Piccioli’s project could establish itself, Kering had already chosen another direction.
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